I decided I wanted to take a more reflective approach to my triathlon training in 2025. With workouts six days a week, it is easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees. So after each month, I’m going to pause and take a look back at what went right, what went wrong, and what’s next.
January began with a much-needed offseason! The 2024 race season was the longest in my career, extending all the way to mid-December when I raced Ironman 70.3 Florida. I certainly don’t plan to sleep in and let my bike gather dust, but I’m excited for a downshift in training for a little while.
January also brought a milestone birthday! On January 11th, I turned 40. I’m officially middle-age. Yay?
My first triathlon coach, Susie, always assigned my age in yards as a birthday swim on my birthday. I’ve kept the tradition going each year. A bit of a snag this year, though! Mother Nature decided to deliver Nashville a winter storm on my birthday.
Keeping this birthday tradition alive was important to me, especially on a milestone birthday! With 5-8 inches expected to arrive on Friday and my birthday on Saturday, I didn’t want to tempt fate. (Or risk me getting behind the wheel while the devil’s dandruff fell from the sky.) So I did my 4000 yards on Thursday.
In hindsight, I shouldn’t have moved the swim up a few days!
That evening, Tiffany and Caitlin surprised me by flying to Nashville for my birthday weekend.
While it did snow, the roads had cleared enough when my birthday arrived on Saturday. Tif and Cait were pretty adamant that I go swim another 4000 yards since this was actually my birthday. The tradition is swimming your age ON your actual birthday, after all.
So. 8000 yards in 48 hours. 🫠
But we put in some other work as well. Proud of us. 😆
The headache on Monday morning proved my partying and drinking days are safely behind me.
The next week, I resumed regular weight training. It had been a while since I’d done any lifting coming off of Ironman 70.3 Florida and then a much-needed break. No regrets! But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, those first upper and lower body workouts after a break? Goodness. I get DOMS really, really, really bad. Things are always sore on day 1 and even worse on day 2. I’ve tried all sorts of things over the years to try to stop it, but I’ve come to realize that the only way through the suck is to just grit my teeth and charge straight through.
It sucked as much as I remembered and expected. But now it’s behind me!
While I was fighting the good fight against the DOMS, I got an email from Ironman that for the second consecutive year, I’ve snagged silver All World Athlete status!
The final week of the month included a trip to Atlanta. About once a quarter or so, I have to travel down there for work. I always like having the opportunity to head back to town, but one downside is I have to swap my running shoes for dress shoes. 😆
It was a fun trip. Everyone I saw wanted to celebrate my 40th birthday. The downside was that I probably partook in too many tasty noms and alcoholic beverages. But you only turn 40 once. And this is my offseason!
When I got home, I had a great week of training. Unfortunately, as I write this on the final day of the month, I’ve got this awful scratchy throat feeling like I’m coming down with something. I first felt the throat pain when I woke up yesterday. Today, I feel super weak and tired. Not really symptomatic of anything beyond that…yet?
Hopefully it’s nothing. 🙏
